CHARLES GEANDISON FINNEY 



J v.:IJ RAN 





Book 



PRESENTED BY 



WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF 

Frederic Norton Finney 




Charles Grandison Finney, aet. 40 
From an Oil Portrait 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 



jHemortal gfobress 



DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION 

OF 

THE FINNEY MEMORIAL CHAPEL 
OBERLIN, JUNE 21, 1908 



BY 

WILLIAM C. COCHRAN 



REVISED AND ANNOTATED BY THE AUTHOR 




PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 

BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 
1908 



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COPYRIGHT 1908, BY WILLIAM C. COCHRAN 



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PREFACE 

The Finney Memorial Chapel was erected and 
given to Oberlin College by Frederic Norton 
Finney, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, second son of 
Rev. Charles G. Finney, as a monument to his 
father. It stands upon the site where Mr. Fin- 
ney's residence stood for over seventy years. 
The Chapel will seat 2000 people and affords 
standing room for 1000 more on special occa- 
sions, and it is to be used for all purposes to 
which a public auditorium is adapted. The 
architect who designed the Chapel and super- 
vised its construction was Mr. Cass Gilbert, of 
New York City. The builder was George Feick, 
of Sandusky, Ohio. 

The Chapel was dedicated, with appropriate 
ceremonies, on Sunday, June 21, 1908. 
William C. Cochran, of Cincinnati, O., the old- 
est grandson of President Finney, was invited 
to deliver the Memorial Address. He was born 
in Mr. Finney's house, was a frequent visitor 
during his early youth, and was an inmate of 

[5] 



PREFACE 

the family from the fall of 1866 to the fall of 
1869, during which time Mr. Finney was en- 
gaged in the preparation of his "Memoirs." 
He was urged to do this by friends in the East 
who sent out a stenographer to assist him in the 
work. He was assured that it was of the utmost 
importance to preserve the record of the wonder- 
ful revivals which attended his labors, for the 
instruction of posterity and the stimulus to like 
self-sacrificing labor on the part of others. The 
work was really distasteful to him and he dis- 
missed the stenographer after a few months and 
destroyed a large part of her work, as it seemed 
to him to be akin to self -laudation and an 
attempt to claim the glory which belonged to 
God alone. His friends persisted and, a year 
later, another stenographer was employed, with 
whose assistance the Memoirs were completed, 
practically as they now appear in print. 

The effort to recall the past brought to mind 
many incidents of his early life, pleasant and 
otherwise, which he would tell the family and 
which they supposed would appear in his Me- 
moirs. These were not published until after 

[6] 



PREFACE 

his death in 1875, and then it was discovered 
that he had eliminated almost everything which 
was not directly connected with his conversion 
and the religious work to which he dedicated 
his life. He may have thought such incidents 
too trivial to record and his purely personal his- 
tory as of no consequence, but in this we believe 
he was mistaken. 

It is impossible, in a public address of an 
hour's duration, to treat in detail of a life that 
was so long and so full of incident. The speaker 
determined to present some facts regarding 
Mr. Finney's early life which are not commonly 
known, but which throw a strong light on his 
character and his unconscious preparation for a 
life-work which was far from his thoughts as a 
young man, and to call attention to some of the 
more striking passages in his later life which 
illustrate his character and power. The text, as 
printed, embraces many interesting details which 
were necessarily excluded from the address as 
delivered, and notes have been added which indi- 
cate the sources of information. Where no 
credit is given, the speaker relied on the "Me- 

[7] 



PREFACE 

moirs," his own personal knowledge of the facts, 
or his recollection of things told him by Mr. 
Finney at the time he was preparing his Me- 
moirs. Wherever it was possible the speaker 
verified his own recollection by consulting mem- 
bers of the family and early friends of Mr. Fin- 
ney, public records and the published writings 
of contemporaries. It is a pleasure to rescue 
from oblivion such facts in regard to his early 
education and accomplishments as have been 
heretofore ignored, and to correct as far as possi- 
ble the misunderstanding with regard to his cul- 
ture and attainments which has arisen in some 
quarters. No narrow-minded, half-educated 
man could have accomplished what Mr. Finney 
did, under Providential guidance. The instru- 
ment chosen was well fitted for the work, both by 

nature and by training. 

W. C. C. 

Cincinnati, Ohio, September 30, 1908. 



PAGE 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Charles Grandison Finney, aei. 40 Frontispiece 

(From an oil portrait) 

Finney Memorial Chapel 12 

(East front) 

Charles Grandison Finney, aei. 65 15 

(From an ambrotype) 

Frederic Norton Finney 76 



Finney Memorial Chapel 94 

(From the southwest) 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 



A recent author lias announced, as the result 
of his investigations in the psychology of relig- 
ion, that conversion is distinctly a phenomenon 
of adolescence ; that the event occurs most often 
at the age of sixteen and immediately before 
and after that year ; and that, if conversion has 
not occurred before twenty, the chances are 
small that it will ever be experienced. 

His conclusions are based on reports from 
1265 individuals, whose average age was 30, and 
the oldest of whom was but 40. A large majority 
of them were students and alumni of a single 
denominational school. His basis seems hardly 
broad enough for safe generalization. Even if 
it can be considered a representative body of 
men and women, it speaks only of conditions 
prevailing in the last quarter century. 1 

"Psychology of Religion, by Prof. E. D. Starbuck, Ph.D., 
pp. 28,* 30, 38. 

[11] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

If it is a faithful picture of existing condi- 
tions, the church is in danger. If it be con- 
ceded that religion has no power to attract men 
of mature judgment, wide reading and experi- 
ence, and cultivated habits of thought, the church 
will lose not only them, but many of the young 
converts, who will, sooner or later, come to 
believe that religion is a species of children's 
disease and that manhood requires them to reject 
what, they find, other men are not expected to 
accent. Even if they persist in their faith and 
do not allow the defection of others to disturb 
their serenity, they will lack power to win over 
others from the ranks of the unconverted. How 
can a person, who has never considered the mani- 
fold arguments against " revealed religion," 
persuade one who has been carried away by 
them? How can one, who has never had a 
doubt, understand and help one who has been 
perplexed with doubts all his life ? Doubt must 
be dispelled by evidence and by argument that 
takes into account the many and real difficulties 
which beset candid minds. The untested 
" credo " of a child avails little. 

[12] 



a h 




MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

It is my privilege, to-night, to speak of a con- 
spicuous exception to the rule, if there be any 
such rule. 

The religion of Charles G. Finney had noth- 
ing to do with adolescence. He was not a prod- 
uct of the Sunday School. He never entered 
one until long after he was converted. He was 
not swept into the church on the tide of a great 
emotional revival. 

At the age of twenty-nine, Charles G. Finney 
was a splendid pagan — a young man rejoicing in 
his strength, proudly conscious of his physical 
and intellectual superiority to all around him. 
He had a magnificent physique. Standing six 
feet two in his stocking feet, he looked much 
taller than that, for he was very erect, very alert, 
full of life and energy, and walked with a quick, 
elastic step that made people instinctively turn 
and look at him. Without an ounce of super- 
fluous flesh he weighed one hundred and eighty- 
five pounds. He could not remember that he 
had ever been sick a day in his life. He had 
been trained in nature's gymnasium — the forest, 
the clearing, the field. 

[13] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

The young people had their athletic sports in 
those days, as well as now. 1 Every Fourth of 
July, Training Day and Thanksgiving Day was 
a "field day," in which old and young engaged 
in the various sports, and champions of differ- 
ent towns and "cross-roads" strove for the mas- 
tery. 2 Mr. Finney did his full share of the work 
and entered with zest into all such games and 
contests. Thousands of country boys did the 
same; there was nothing exceptional about his 
opportunities. What was exceptional was the 
use he made of them, his ambition to excel — 
even in the small affairs of life. 

He brought to every task and every game — be- 
sides his athletic frame — keen intelligence, ner- 
vous energy and indomitable will. When he 

1 The chief sports were running, vaulting, high jump, stand- 
ing jump, running jump, hop, skip and jump, boxing, wrestling, 
foot-ball (the kicking game), town-ball (from which our game 
of base-ball was evolved), pitching quoits, shooting at a mark, 
etc. Boxing was not bruising. It consisted in efforts to knock 
off the hat or cap of an opponent and parrying similar efforts 
on his part. Occasionally a boxer received a severe blow on 
the head, but that was incidental and not a matter of intention. 
Wrestling was regarded as the king of sports and the champion 
wrestler was held in high honor. 

2 Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., p. 36. 

[14] 




Charles Grandison Finney, aet. 65 
From an Ambrotype 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

was twenty, lie excelled every man and boy he 
met, in every species of toil, or sport. No man 
could throw him; no man could knock his hat 
off ; no man could run faster, jump farther, leap 
higher, or throw a ball with greater force and 
precision. When his family moved to the shore 
of Henderson's Bay, near Sackett's Harbor, he 
added to his accomplishments rowing, swimming 
and sailing. He was a lover of nature and the 
' ' call of the wild ' ' was strong in him. He hardly 
knew which he loved most — the depth of the 
forest, with its mysterious life and whisperings ; 
or the solitude of the open lake with the great 
depths of sky above and water below and nothing 
between him and eternity, but the thin sides of 
a boat. 

He had a large head, symmetrically developed 
and crowned with abundant light-brown hair, 
silky in texture and slightly curling. 1 His nose 

x As will be seen from the profile view published herewith, 
his profile from the glabella to the occipital point formed an 
almost perfect semi-circle, the only variation being at the top, 
where the dome rose above the line of the circle. When Mr. 
Finney visited New York in 1830, the psendo-science of 
Phrenology had a great vogue and his interest was aroused. He 
thought it might aid him in his study of human nature and he 

[15] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

was strongly aquiline. His eyes were large and 
blue, at times mild as an April sky, and at others, 
cold and penetrating as polished steel. At times 
they beamed with love and sympathy, at other 
times they became scrutinizing and inscrutable. 
One day, nothing escaped their attention; the 
next, they seemed to take note of nothing terres- 
trial. When in the full tide of his eloquence, 
they swept his audience like search lights, fas- 
cinating, compelling attention, yet producing 
strange, uneasy feelings. His complexion was 
fair, and readily flushed with every passing 
emotion. 

not only investigated the subject carefully, but submitted to 
having his own head " examined and charted." The result de- 
lighted the phrenologists, for everything that was known of his 
mental traits and character corresponded closely with their inter- 
pretation of his cranial development. The physical, mental and 
spiritual qualities were all highly developed and almost equally 
balanced. He had great ambition, firmness and self-esteem, but 
greater benevolence and spirituality. The logical faculty was 
highly developed; but so was sublimity and the imaginative. He 
had the " bumps " of time, tune, and language and great knowl- 
edge of human nature. The only thing which puzzled them was 
an apparently large development of humor, or mirthfulness, 
which seemed inconsistent with the severe gravity of his speech 
and manner; but all who remembered him in his youth, noted 
his natural love of fun, his sociable disposition and his keen 
sense of the ridiculous. 

[16] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

At Henderson, lie taught school from his six- 
teenth to his twentieth year, two months in sum- 
mer and three months in winter. It was like the 
ideal university — in one respect — anybody could 
study anything. There were no grades and no 
prescribed text-books. Each scholar brought 
such books as he possessed and the teacher did 
the rest. One who attended this school * said of 
him: 

" There was nothing which anyone else knew, 
that Mr. Finney didn't know, and there was 
nothing which anyone else could do that Mr. 
Finney could not do — and do a great deal better. 
He was the idol of his pupils. He joined in their 
sports before and after school, and although at 
first there were older and larger boys than he in 
the school, he could beat them at everything. 
He would lie down on the ground and let as 
many as could pile on top of him and try to hold 
him down. He would say, 'Are you ready 1 ?' 
Then he would make a quick turn, rise up and 
shake them all off, just as a lion might shake off a 
lot of puppies. In school, all was different. 
He was very dignified and kept perfect order. 
Should any boy attempt to create a disturbance, 

1 Horatio N. Davis, father of Senator Cushman K. Davis, late 
of Minnesota. 

2 [17] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

one flash of Mr. Finney's eye would quell the 
sinner at once. Oh, I tell you, they all loved 
and worshiped him, and all felt that some day he 
would be a great man." 

A young man, from sixteen to twenty, could 
hardly be employed better than in teaching a 
country school. It completes his own elemen- 
tary education; gives him power to express 
clearly what he knows; awakens in him a con- 
sciousness of power over others and a knowledge 
of human nature. The effort to command the 
respect of others contributes to his own dignity 
and self-respect. He must be careful in his 
speech and manners, so as not to offend or cor- 
rupt any of the little ones committed to his 
charge. Thus Mr. Finney grew to manhood, 
strong, self-respecting, helpful to others, clean 
of speech and correct in habits. 

Mr. Finney was fitted for this work of teach- 
ing, by two years' schooling in the Hamilton 
Oneida Institute, at Clinton, New York, 1 only a 
few miles from his father's farm in Oneida 
County. The principal of this school, at that 

Afterwards incorporated as Hamilton College. 
[18] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

time, was Seth Norton, a graduate of Yale Col- 
lege and a tutor there for two years before com- 
ing to Clinton. He was a fine classical scholar, 
an inspiring teacher and a lover of music. He 
composed hymns and anthems and was the vil- 
lage chorister. 1 He discovered great possibili- 
ties in this tall, blue-eyed child of the woods, and 
seems to have given him unusual attention. He 
inspired him with an ambition to secure a classi- 
cal education and evoked an intense love of music. 
He taught him to sing, to read music at sight, 
and to play on the violin and bass viol, or what 
we would call the violoncello. That instrument 
appealed powerfully to Mr. Finney's passionate 
nature. When he began to earn money by teach- 
ing, the first use he made of it was to buy a 'cello. 
Then he gave up much of his leisure to singing, to 
the mastery of his 'cello, and to a thorough un- 
derstanding of harmony and composition. It 
was the day of " buckwheat notes" 2 and " figured 

1 Statement of Dr. A. N. Brockway, of New York City. 

2 Among his early possessions was an old Psalm Book of the 
Dutch Reformed Church, with black, square, lozenge and other 
queer shaped notes, which soon disappeared from other hymn 
books and musical collections. The "figured bass" persisted in 
hymnals and music books down to 1860, or thereabouts. 

[19] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

bass" and, without a master, he soon learned to 
invest an air with its appropriate chords and to 
write out the different parts for a chorus. He 
thus came into the very heart of music ; to have 
a thorough appreciation of all that was good, and 
a proper contempt for all that was trivial. This 
deep understanding of, and loving interest in 
good music in after years secured for him the 
devoted attachment of such organists and com- 
posers as Lowell Mason, at Boston, and Thomas 
Hastings and William B. Bradbury at New 
York. They were glad to consult his wishes 
while conducting choirs in the places where he 
preached. 1 I may be pardoned for dwelling at 
such length on his musical tastes and accomplish- 
ments, for they played an important part in 

1 Mr. Finney's daughters were accomplished singers, and one 
of them became a fine performer on the lute, guitar, harp, and 
piano. He tried to teach his sons to play on the violin and 'cello, 
but their energies sought other channels and a critical taste for 
good music was all they acquired. In 1848, Gen. J. D. Cox, then 
a student at Oberlin College and a frequent visitor at the Finney 
house, wrote home : " He lives what he preaches and there is 
nothing like austerity about him. In his family he is all pleas- 
antness — sings and plays with his children and is as one of 
them. * * * He is passionately fond of music and we can 
at any time make up a choir in the family." 

[20] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

shaping his subsequent career, and they con- 
tributed in no small degree to making Oberlin 
the musical centre that it is to-day. 

He had a musical voice of phenomenal range, 
flexibility and power, and song was the natural 
expression of his healthy, joyous soul. But he 
was also intensely emotional and almost as sensi- 
tive to sympathetic appeals as his 'cello was to 
the vibrations of the strings. It was not an un- 
usual thing for him, strong and vigorous as he 
was, to weep over his 'cello ; and he resorted to 
it, in every hour of trouble, as to a bosom friend. 
To use his own expression, his " sensibility often 
overflowed." But this mood was exceptional. 
He was, normally, full of fun and endowed 
with a strong sense of humor. He loved to 
dance and was foremost in social meetings of 
every sort. He was saved from intemperance, 
profanity, and vileness — not by any religious 
scruples, for at this time he had none — but by his 
innate delicacy and refinement. 

In the summer of 1812 war was declared 
against Great Britain. It was not generally ex- 
pected ; in the North it was not desired. Sack- 

[21] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

ett's Harbor, only a few miles from Mr. Fin- 
ney's home, was made a naval base; a fort was 
erected and garrisoned by a few companies of 
soldiers; ships and naval stores were concen- 
trated at that point and the construction of 
other ships of war was begun. 1 Rumors of an 
invasion from Canada filled the air and the 
militia was called out. A company was formed 
at Henderson, out of persons exempt from mili- 
tary service, with Mark Hopkins as Captain. 2 
He tendered their services to the Governor of 
New York with the significant statement that 
they were opposed to the war, but would go to 
any place in the county for home defense. 3 

Notwithstanding this adverse sentiment of his 
neighbors, Mr. Finney went to Sackett's Harbor, 

1 Adams' History of the United States, Vol. vi, pp. 342 to 
344; Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., pp. 587, 588. 

2 Public Papers of Daniel H. Tompkins, Vol. i, p. 376. 

8 Thurlow Weed says that a similar sentiment prevailed in 
Oneida County and generally throughout Northern New York. 
Autobiography, pp. 23, 26. The opposition of its leading citi- 
zens to the war prevented the selection of Henderson Harbor — 
a much better place than Saekett's Harbor — for the naval base 
and probably ruined its chances of becoming an important lake 
port and city. Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., 
pp. 167, 168. 

[221 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

among the first, to enlist in the Navy. There 
was fighting blood in his veins. 1 When he got 
there all was confusion. There seemed to be 
no order, no discipline, no understanding of 
what was to be done, or how to do it. He was 
amazed at the incompetence displayed. The 
militia, freed from home restraints and not yet 
subjected to military discipline, were becoming 
demoralized. The streets were full of drunken 
men, cursing, quarreling and refusing to take 
orders from anybody. He heard more profan- 
ity and obscenity in that one day, than he had 
heard in all his life before. To cap the climax, 
he was accosted by an abandoned woman — a fol- 
lower of the camp, — young, pretty and saucy. 
He looked at her in wonder and, when he com- 
prehended the nature of her request, he was so 
overcome with pity for her degradation and lack 
of shame that his cheeks burned and before he 

1 Finneys were among the Norsemen who swooped down upon 
the Channel Islands in the tenth century, and they settled in 
Guernsey. One of his ancestors was a captain of militia at 
Bristol, R. L, in the seventeenth century. Three cousins were 
officers in the New York State Militia at various times from 
1811 to 1815. Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment 
of the State of New York, Vol. ii, 1808-1817. 

[23] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

could check it, lie was shedding tears and sobbing 
violently. She, moved to shame by this extra- 
ordinary spectacle, wept too, and without an- 
other word they parted and Mr. Finney went, 
back home to tell his 'cello of the awful things 
he had seen and heard that day. 1 

He was willing to fight for his country — in a 
just cause. He was not willing to sacrifice him- 
self on the altar of incompetence — especially for 
a cause which his most respected neighbors con- 
sidered unjust. 

The threatened invasion was a fiasco ; the scare 
was soon over; the militia returned to their 
homes and, in the fall of that year, he went to 
Warren, Connecticut, his native town, to pre- 
pare for Tale College in a high school which en- 
joyed a wide reputataion. 2 There, undisturbed 
by faint rumors of a war in which the people 

1 In narrating this incident, fifty-five years later, he was 
visibly affected and remarked : " Oh, if I had only been a 
Christian at that time! That young woman might have been 
saved! Perhaps God brought about this meeting on purpose to 
open her eyes, and she may have repented." 

2 The Hamilton Oneida Institute had become a college in 1812, 
and his former instructor, Seth Norton, had become Professor 
of Ancient Languages, and was no longer available, as he was 
fully occupied in college duties, having nine recitations daily. 

[24] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

of New England took no interest, he passed two 
years in study. 1 He supported himself by work 
on his uncle's farm, in summer, and teaching 
singing school, in winter. The young people 
came from miles around to attend this school, 
and the traditions of his fine singing are still 
well preserved in that vicinity. He developed 
a great reputation as a wit, an orator, and a 
poet. He was the editor of a school journal 
which was prepared in manuscript and passed 
from hand to hand. It abounded in local hits, 
and every foible of teacher, pastor, leading citi- 
zens, or pupils, was touched up in satirical vein. 2 
In 1814 Mr. Finney was prepared to enter 
Yale College and began to think of ways and 
means for going, but his teacher, himself a Yale 

He died in 1818 — probably worked to death. Statement of 
Dr. Asahel Norton Brockway, of New York City. 

1 The extent of this disaffection may be judged from the fact 
that the " peace party " carried Massachusetts in the fall of 
1812 by a majority of 24,000, swept the congressional districts 
throughout New England and New York, and captured the 
electoral votes of all these states, except Vermont. Adams' His- 
tory of the United States, Vol. vi, pp. 389, 413. 

2 Statement of Noble B. Strong, Cornwall Bridge, Conn., 
whose father attended the Warren High School, at the same time 
as Mr. Finney. 

[25] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

graduate, advised him not to go, saying that he 
had already learned to study and think and did 
not need the recitations, that it was a waste of 
time to attend them, and that he could easily 
take the whole four years' course in two. This 
was verified by the actual experience of Horace 
Bushnell, who afterwards attended this same 
high school and then graduated from Yale Col- 
lege in two years. Forty years later Andrew 
D. White went through Yale, and complains, in 
his autobiography, that he learned nothing there, 
except what was in his books, and that he could 
have learned a great deal more, if he had not 
been obliged to waste three of the best hours of 
each day in attending recitations. Mr. Finney 
followed the advice of his teacher, went to New 
Jersey to teach school, and at the same time car- 
ried on his college studies, going back to War- 
ren, at intervals, to review them with his teacher 
and to receive further suggestions and assist- 
ance. Thus he had mastered the whole college 
curriculum at the age of twenty-six. His knowl- 
edge of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics was as 
good as that of any graduate who had not pur- 

[26] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

sued post-graduate courses; out one thing was 
lacking — he had not received a college diploma. 
No one has ever questioned the scholarship of 
Father Keep, John P. Cowles, or Henry Cowles, 
because they secured Yale diplomas. President 
Mahan secured one at Hamilton College, Dr. 
Morgan secured one at Williams, President 
Fairchild secured one at Oberlin. All these 
were accounted "learned men." If they had 
not received degrees, they might have been called 
ignorant men. That is the fate which has over- 
taken their associate, Mr. Finney, in these latter 
days. Men who never knew him have spoken 
of him as though he were a fervid, but unedu- 
cated exhorter, and in a History of Presby- 
terianism in Central New York, I was startled 
to find him charged with "rashness" due to 
"imperfect education." It is news to the 
Alumni and ex-students of Oberlin College. It 
is news to the hundreds of thousands of men 
and women who heard him preach in this coun- 
try and Great Britain. It affects us much as it 
would to hear Benjamin Franklin called an 
ignorant man, though his schooling ended at the 

[27] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

age of ten; or William Cullen Bryant, though 
he did not get beyond the freshman year; or 
Joseph Henry, who graduated at an academy, 
like the Warren high school, and never went to 
a college. 

We should remember that while colleges and 
professional schools afford facilities for acquir- 
ing an education, they have no monopoly. There 
were great lawyers before any of the existing 
law schools were founded, and great preachers 
and theologians before any of the seminaries 
came into existence. Great scientists, linguists, 
statesmen, and economists have grown up entirely 
outside of the schools. If a man will read, in- 
vestigate and think, wherever he is, he will be- 
come educated. No man ever talked with Mr. 
Finney half an hour without being impressed 
with the great scope and variety of his learning. 
It seemed almost presumption to attempt to en- 
lighten him on any subject. Yet, if a man values 
his reputation, it is not enough to secure an 
education; he must secure a diploma and become 
one of a body of alumni who habitually speak 
of their college and their fellow alumni as great. 

T28] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Mr. Finney has said, in his " Memoirs": 

" I never possessed so much knowledge of the 
ancient languages as to think myself capable of 
independently criticising our English transla- 
tion of the Bible." 

It would be well, if some of our Bible critics 
were educated enough to say the same. Mr. 
Finney's knowledge of the Greek Testament and 
Hebrew Bible was much more intimate and pro- 
found than that of most seminary graduates. 1 

He had a peculiarly inquiring mind and every- 
thing in nature, books, or the affairs of men, 
interested him. He was not content with a mere 
smattering of information; it must be full and 
exact, or he professed ignorance. He was a mas- 
ter of the English language. His style was 
formed by general reading, but chiefly by study- 
ing Shakespeare, Blackstone, the decisions of 

1 One of his most cherished possessions was a handsome copy 
of Bag-sterns English Hexapla — which contained the Greek Text 
of the New Testament, after Scholz, at the head of the pages and, 
in parallel columns underneath, the six most important English 
translations (Wickliffe, 1380, Tyndale, 1534, Cranmer, 1539, 
Geneva, 1558, Anglo-Rhenish, 1582, and King James, 1611). The 
man who studies these devoutly has little need for self-dependent 
criticism. 

[291 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

such judges as Chancellors Kent and Livingston, 
and — after he had once made its acquaintance — 
the English Bible. 

His large library at Oberlin was lined from 
floor to ceiling with the best English literature — 
Histories, Biographies, Essays, Commentaries, 
Scientific and Philosophical Works — everything 
in fact except Fiction, and the numerous mar- 
ginal notes in his handwriting showed that they 
were carefully and thoughtfully read. He 
dared not indulge in the reading of novels after 
he entered the ministry, although he had read 
Richardson, Fielding and De Foe before, and 
seized with avidity on the Waverly Novels 
as fast as they appeared. Whenever, in 
later life, he allowed himself to listen to the 
reading of a novel, his attention became rapt and 
he was easily moved to laughter or tears by the 
wit or pathos of such masters as Charles Reade, 
Thackeray and Dickens. But he felt and said 
that it was dissipation — an unwholesome strain 
upon the emotions. No resulting good could be 
accomplished and all stirring of the emotions 
which could not be followed up by appropriate 

[30] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

action was as bad and weakening in its effects 
on the mind as alcoholic stimulants were on the 
will and body. 

There are many solecisms in the published 
reports of his " Revival Lectures," but anyone 
who will turn to the prefaces will discover that 
Mr. Finney did not write these lectures. They 
were delivered ex tempore. Mr. Joshua Leavitt, 
publisher of The Evangelist, made notes in long 
hand and wrote them out hurriedly from these 
notes and sent them to The Evangelist for publi- 
cation. Mr. Finney never saw them until after 
they were in print. They were reprinted in 
book form from The Evangelist in April, 1835. 
Mr. Finney was painfully conscious of their im- 
perfections ; but, at the time they were published, 
he had many serious matters to occupy his 
thoughts — one of them being the question 
whether or not he should go to Oberlin — and he 
had no time to revise them carefully. Thus we 
have, in " Revival Lectures," perhaps half of 
Mr. Finney's thoughts, clothed in the language 
of another, except where certain passages were 
so striking as to fasten themselves in the mind 

[31] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

of the reporter. I doubt if one ever heard an 
nngrammatical expression, or an imperfectly 
constructed sentence, come from Mr. Finney's 
lips. His "Memoirs" are a much more reliable 
exhibit of his English style, though these, too, 
were taken down from dictation, after he was 75 
years old. 

In 1818, Mr. Finney settled down to the study 
of law at Adams, a lively little town near his 
paternal home. He read law diligently, became 
the law clerk of Judge Benjamin Wright, the 
most prominent lawyer and politician in that 
region, was admitted to practice at the age of 
twenty-eight, and at once became active in the 
profession. 

"When he first went to Adams he was asked to 
lead the choir, on account of his musical accom- 
plishments, and he accepted. He organized the 
young people of the village into a chorus, taught 
them singing, and led them with his 'cello. They 
became warmly attached to him, as did all who 
were brought into contact with him. A year 
after Mr. Finney went to Adams, Rev. George 
W. Gale, a graduate of Princeton College and 

[32] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Seminary, was installed as pastor of the church. 
He was struck with the intelligence, high char- 
acter, and remarkable influence of Mr. Finney, 
and made a confidant of him. On "blue Mon- 
day" he often sought him out and asked him 
what he thought of the sermon the day before. 
These sermons were always carefully written 
and left small excuse for criticism as English 
compositions, but Mr. Finney was painfully can- 
did — he never did flatter anybody — and told him 
that he did not believe the people understood 
one-half of what was written and that many of 
his doctrines were contrary to reason. They had 
many arguments. Mr. Finney was fearless and 
unsparing in his criticism, and if Monday was 
"blue" before the interview, it must often have 
appeared black before they got through. Yet 
Mr. Finney was so manifestly serious and sin- 
cere, it was impossible to feel resentment. Mr. 
Gale did, however, feel deeply concerned at Mr. 
Finney's mental attitude, and he warned other 
young people not to talk with him, as he would 
surely lead them astray. 



[33] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

When the session proposed, in 1821, to try to 
get up a revival in the church, Mr. Gale said it 
was of no use; that Mr. Finney's influence with 
the young people was so great that nothing could 
be done with them while he remained in Adams. 
He said that he had labored with Mr. Finney 
for two years and came nearer to making ship- 
wreck of his own faith than to converting him. 
He said he found him very intelligent and very 
hardened and not at all impressed with the im- 
portance of religion. Other men about town 
would say, when approached on the subject of 
religion, "Well, there's Finney, he attends 
church all the time — why don't you convert him? 
If he becomes a Christian, I'll think there's 
something in it." Mr. Gale found himself in a 
heart breaking position — as many another young 
minister has — trying, without meeting his argu- 
ments, to convert a man who would reason in- 
stead of accepting the doctrines of the church on 
authority. His health began to fail and he told 
them they had better call some one else, as he 
was not equal to the situation. Church people 
were filled with doubt and discouragement. The 

[34] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

irreligious laughed and said, "Mr. Finney is 
too much for them. He is altogether too smart 
to be caught by such chaff." Some of this talk 
reached Mr. Finney's ears and ministered to his 
pride. On Sunday, October 7, 1821, Mr. Gale — 
sick in body and ill at ease — preached in a half 
hearted way. There was not the slightest change 
apparent in the manner of that young man, whose 
blue eyes almost paralyzed Mm with their cold, 
critical searching. 

Yet, on the following Thursday morning, ex- 
cited people spread the news all over town, "Mr. 
Finney has been converted. Mr. Finney has 
been converted." The news seemed too good to 
be true. Mr. Gale said he did not believe it, and 
one of the local skeptics said, "It is one of Fin- 
ney's practical jokes. He is trying to see just 
what he can make people believe." 

That evening the church was crowded with 
people, without any appointment, eager to hear 
all about it, and Mr. Finney, himself, rose, with- 
out any preliminary exercises, or introduction, 
and related his experience, and the great revival 
in Adams began then and there. 

[35] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

There was absolutely nothing in the ministry 
at that time to attract an ambitious and self- 
seeking man. Religion was everywhere at a 
low ebb; the prominent professional and busi- 
ness men had little or nothing to do with it; 
clergymen were poorly paid and treated with 
scant respect; Tom Paine 's "Age of Reason" 
and so-called " French Infidelity" had infected 
the masses; churches and church meetings 
seemed to be kept up for the exclusive benefit of 
a few superstitious women and goody-good chil- 
dren. Mr. Finney was proud, ambitious, accom- 
plished and self-seeking, and on the high road 
to success in his chosen profession. The his- 
torian of Jefferson County, New York, speaking 
of the conversion of Mr. Finney, says : 

" He had previously been a law student under 
Judge Benjamin Wright and evinced an ability 
and sagacity that would doubtless have made 
him eminent in that profession." 1 

One of the younger set, who were devoted ad- 
mirers and followers of Mr. Finney, said : 

1 Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., 1854, p. 76. 

[36] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

"When lie abandoned the profession and de- 
cided to study for the ministry, we all felt that 
he had made an awful mistake. That if he had 
continued in the practice he was destined, in a 
very short time, to attain the highest position at 
the bar and in politics." x 

He was peculiarly fitted to succeed in the 
practice of law at a time when text-books were 
almost unknown, when the published reports 
could all be placed upon a single shelf ; 2 and 
when success depended upon close, logical 
reasoning from general principles. He, him- 
self, has recorded that he loved Ms profession 



1 Horatio N. Davis, father of Senator Cushman K. Davis. 

2 The text-books were Coke upon Littleton, Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries, Fearne on Remainders, Sugden's Law of Vendors, 
Sugden on Powers, and local Form Books and Treatises on Prac- 
tice. Chancellor Kent and Joseph Story were still on the bench 
and had not begun to write the Commentaries and text-books 
which afterwards became so prominent in the education of 
lawyers and the opinions of courts. English reports were very 
expensive and, as a rule, inaccessible to the country lawyers. 
The New York reports then consisted of Coleman & Caines' Cases, 
1 vol.; Caines' Cases, 2 vols.; Caines' Reports, 3 vols.; Johnson's 
Cases, 3 vols. ; Johnson's Chancery Reports, 4 vols., and Johnson's 
Reports, 18 vols. Besides these a well stocked law library would 
contain the reports of Connecticut, 9 vols. ; Massachusetts, 8 vols. ; 
Vermont, 4 vols. ; and the U. S. Supreme Court Reports, 18 vols. 

[37] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

and that the stumbling block in the way of his 
earlier conversion, was the feeling that if he 
submitted, he would have to give up his practice 
and go into the ministry. 1 Every judge and 
lawyer who heard Mr. Finney preach felt that 
a great lawyer was lost to the bar of New York, 
when Charles G. Finney united with the church 
at Adams. We have said that he was ambitious. 
The petty practice of a country town would not 
have contented him long. Either he would have 
moved to a larger city— Utica, Rochester, or Al- 
bany — and sought business of a higher type, or 
he would have gone into politics ; and here, again, 
circumstances were such as to favor a successful 
career. 

Political conditions were chaotic, old parties 
breaking up, new parties forming and elections 
turning on the popularity or unpopularity of a 
single man, or measure, or the eloquence of a 
particular speaker. The Federalist Party had 
lost its great leaders and its prestige. The real 
strife in New York politics was between factions 

1 Memoirs of Charles G. Finney, pp. 25, 36. 
[38] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

of the Republican (Democratic) Party, and Fed- 
eralists could not hope to succeed, except as they 
coalesced with one or the other of the factions of 
the dominant party. It was one of those crises 
in American history when the management of 
affairs seems to pass from the old leaders of a 
dying party to the young men of the opposite 
party, leaping over an entire generation. The 
" Revolutionary Statesmen' ' were being rele- 
gated to the rear and young men of ability came 
rapidly to the front. For example, Silas 
Wright, three years younger than Mr. Finney, 
was admitted to the bar at Canton in the adjoin- 
ing county of St. Lawrence, in 1819 ; was elected 
to the State Senate in 1823, to Congress in a dis- 
trict which embraced Jefferson County, in 1827 ; 
became Comptroller of State in 1829, United 
States Senator in 1833, and again in 1837, and 
Governor of the State in 1844. He became an 
influential member of the self-appointed clique, 
called the " Albany Regency," which, under the 
leadership of Van Buren, dominated the Repub- 
lican (Democratic) Party and practically dic- 
tated all its nominations and appointments — one 

[39] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

of the earliest and most efficient " machines" in 
politics. 1 

Mr. Finney's opportunity lay in the opposi- 
tion to this ruling "ring." The Federalists 
alone had no power to overthrow it ; but a great 
many of the Democrats were dissatisfied and 
ready to unite with them, or other parties, to 
overthrow the "ring," whenever a promising 
issue could be raised, or a persuasive candidate 
could be found. Thurlow Weed, one of the 
ablest politicians the State has ever known, di- 
rected the opposition to the "Regency" and was 
on the lookout for strong men, or popular meas- 
ures, about which to rally the scattered forces 
of the discontented. He scored his first great 
victory in 1824 when the "Regency," in mere 
wantonness of power, deposed He Witt Clinton 
from the Erie Canal Commission. The Erie 
Canal owed its inception and successful comple- 
tion to De Witt Clinton, more than to any other 
man in the State, and the people of Central New 
York rose up in wrath, nominated him for Gov- 

1 Hough's History of St. Lawrence County, N. Y., pp. 613 
to 615; Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, p. 103. 

[40] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

ernor in a convention of what was called "The 
People's Party/' at Utica, and elected Mni by 
an overwhelming majority. 1 Judge Benjamin 
Wright, in whose office Mr. Finney studied law, 
was a shrewd politician and a warm personal 
friend of De Witt Clinton, who appointed him 
Canal Commissioner at one time and Surrogate 
of Jefferson County at a later time. 2 Mr. Fin- 
ney's sympathies would all have been with Clin- 
ton, and his mistreatment would have excited 
his indignation, as injustice and oppression 
always did. Jefferson County was debatable 
ground and had been for thirty years, no party 
having a record of continued success and majori- 
ties being very small. 3 Mr. Finney would cer- 
tainly have taken the stump for Clinton and 
shared in his triumph. Two results would in- 
evitably have followed. He would have estab- 
lished a wide reputation as a powerful speaker, 
and that sleepless ambition, which drives the 

'Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, pp. 74, 109-121, 204, 205; 
Bancroft's Life of Seward, pp. 15-20. 

2 Emerson's History of Jefferson County, N. Y., pp. 188, 428; 
Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., pp. 76, 368. 

3 Houghes' History of Jefferson County, N. Y., pp. 371, 372. 

[41] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

politician ever onward, would have taken full 
possession of him. He would have been " re- 
warded/' as was the fashion in those days, by a 
political appointment, or, more likely, by a 
nomination and election to the State Senate. 
This was a position much sought after by young 
lawyers, for the Senate was then modeled some- 
what after the English House of Lords and exer- 
cised judicial powers as a Court of Error and 
xlppeal. 1 Here he w T ould have attracted the at- 
tention of Thurlow Weed, who would have 
found in him just the man he needed to head the 
opposition. Weed, himself, was no speaker. 2 
What would have followed may be judged from 
the career of William H. Seward, who first came 
into prominence in this campaign of 1824, and 
was, thereafter, zealously pushed forward by 
Weed. He was elected State Senator in 1830 ; 
nominated for Governor on the Anti-Masonic 
ticket in 1834; nominated and elected by the 
Whigs in 1838, and again in 1840 ; became United 

1 Lothrop's Life of Seward, pp. 19-21. 

2 Autobiography, pp. 106, 172; Bancroft's Life of Seward, 
pp. 25-31. 

[42] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

States Senator in 1849 and 1855, and a promi- 
nent candidate for the Republican Presidential 
nomination in 1856 and 1860, and was appointed 
Secretary of State in 1861. 

Mr. Finney, if in politics, would have had the 
advantage of Mr. Seward in every respect. He 
was nine years his senior in age, two years his 
senior at the bar, and his commanding figure and 
penetrating musical voice would have contrasted 
favorably with the diminutive stature and shrill 
voice of Seward. Seward says of himself : 

"Earlier than I can remember I had a catar- 
rhal affection, which had left my voice husky and 
incapable of free intonation. I had occasion 
throughout my college course to discover that I 
was unsuccessful in declamation. ' ' l 

His biographer says of him : 

"Seward had no special gift of voice, or pres- 
ence. He was below the average height, with 
nothing commanding in his appearance, and his 
voice was harsh and shrill, but there was courage 
and earnestness about his campaign speeches 
. . . which made them most effective." 2 

1 Lotlirop's Life of Seward, p. 60. 

2 Bancroft's Life of Seward, p. 10. 

[43] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

As for courage and earnestness, Mr. Finney 
was more than a match for Seward and he would 
have been more consistent in his political action. 
His well-known convictions at each stage of 
political evolution, corresponded closely with 
Seward's, down to 1860, when the latter seemed 
disposed to surrender all the principles for 
which the Republicans had fought and won, in 
a vain effort to placate the South. 

Loved, admired, respected, with a large and 
devoted following, if any man should have been 
satisfied with his prospects in life and could have 
got along without religion in this world, it was 
Charles G. Finney at the age of twenty-nine. 

His conversion resulted from thoughtful read- 
ing of the Bible, a copy of which he had bought 
shortly after beginning the study of the law — 
the first he had ever owned. He had read many 
books before — everything, in fact, he could find 
within a day's walk of places where he chanced 
to live — but this book was different. It was the 
only book that described God as having any in- 
terest in, or direct influence over the affairs of 
men, as asserting Divine authority and promis- 

[44] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

ing to reward or punish men according to their 
deserts. It kindled new thoughts in his active 
mind and he began to see in dim outline the great 
scheme of the moral universe. In a few months' 
time, he became convinced that the Bible was 
indeed the word of Grod ; that no men could have 
written such a book without being Divinely in- 
spired. He then studied it with the diligence 
that he had before given to the New York Sta- 
tutes and Reports and to his legal text-books. 

He had developed a well-rounded creed of his 
own, before he was oppressed with the feeling 
that it was time to act. Religion was simply a 
life of obedience to God. Conversion was sim- 
ply a determination to lead that life. It in- 
volved a complete surrender of one's own plans 
and wishes. Anything short of this was per- 
sistence in disobedience, and disobedience was 
sin. Mr. Finney's life had been correct, judged 
by human standards, and he could only accuse 
himself of pride, wilfulness, and an indifference 
to religion which amounted to contempt of God. 
But these were real offenses. 

He began to feel the need of pardon and f or- 

[45] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

giveness. Then arose the question of the terms 
of forgiveness. He indulged in secret prayer. 
And the more he read and prayed, the more con- 
vinced he became that he must get rid of his 
pride and ambition, must give up the profession 
which he loved, and the political prospects which 
glittered before him, and must atone for his 
previous indifference — by supreme devotion to 
the Master's service. Could he do it? What 
would people say 1 The very reiteration of these 
questions revealed to him the sinfulness of his 
heart, the proud and selfish spirit which had 
actuated him all along. Then followed that great 
emotional struggle, of which no man but himself 
was aware at the time, lasting three days and 
three nights, at the end of which he made a com- 
plete surrender, gave up everything for which he 
had planned and worked, and received the assur- 
ance that he was forgiven. The struggle was so 
severe and the joy of adoption so overwhelming, 
that he always remembered and often celebrated 
the day of this "new birth," October 10, 1821. 
The keynote of his whole subsequent career is 
found in his remark to a client, next morning : 

[46] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

"I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ 
to plead His cause, and you must go and get 
some one else to attend to your law suit. I can- 
not do it." 

He refused all offers of business after that, be- 
cause he did not dare trust himself in the excite- 
ment of a contested law suit. He began, at once, 
to work for the conversion of others. He called 
his choir together, confessed that he had been 
a stumbling block in the way of their conversion, 
asked for their forgiveness, related his experi- 
ence, urged them to become Christians at once, 
and prayed with them ; and all joined the church 
within a short time. One of these converts was a 
daughter of Judge Wright, who became the 
mother of Bishop Henry B. Whipple, of Minne- 
sota. 1 Can anyone estimate the far-reaching 
consequences of a single conversion? In a few 
days he went to Henderson, spoke to his parents 
and appointed a prayer and conference meeting 
at the Baptist church — then without a pastor — 
and a revival began there. Wherever he was 
known, the most powerful argument that could 

1 Emerson's History of Jefferson County, N. Y., pp. 428, 429. 

T47] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

be used was the fact of his own conversion. If 
this intellectual skeptic, this promisiijg lawyer 
and rising politician, this boon companion and 
social leader had become converted, there must 
be something in religion. Men's attention was 
arrested, their thoughts were engaged, and they 
yielded to his arguments and prayers almost in- 
stantly. 1 Long before Mr. Finney was licensed 
to preach, he had accomplished more in the way 
of converting souls than most ministers do in a 
life time. 

When he announced his intention to study for 
the ministry, the local Presbytery committed 
him to the care of Mr. Gale, and he pursued his 
studies under Mr. Gale's direction and part of 
the time at his house. His theological education 
seems to have consisted largely in reading his 
Bible and disputing certain doctrines of the Old 
School Presbyterians. He accepted nothing on 
Mr. Gale's say-so, and the fact that such and such 
views were held at Princeton made no impres- 
sion upon him. He continued to reason, and to 

1 Davenport's Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 190, 
191. 

[48] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

accept nothing that his reason did not commend, 
and poor Mr. Gale said again and again : 

" Mr. Finney, if you continue to argue and 
reason, you will land in infidelity, just as many 
of the students at Princeton have done. You 
must accept some things on the faith of the 
great fathers of the church, and not be so 
opinionated." 

The fruit of this reliance on his own reasoning 
was seen in his absolute confidence in his con- 
clusions. He not only rested on convictions so 
reached, but he believed that he could convince 
any man, who was honest and earnest, of the 
truth of his views. This was one secret of his 
tremendous power over adults. 

After he was licensed to preach, wherever he 
went he sought out privately, or contrived to have 
brought before him, the men of character and 
intelligence who were indifferent, or openly 
opposed to religion, and reasoned with them. He 
would say : 

"I have not come to find fault, I have been in 
the same position myself. I may be able to help 

4 [49] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

you solve some of your difficulties. I think I 
have found the truth. Let us talk it over and 
see if you are mistaken, or whether I am all 
wrong." 

And he almost never failed, if the man was 
really a man of character, and had no secret 
vices. Among the first to be converted in Rome, 
Utica and Rochester were the Presidents of In- 
fidel Clubs founded on Tom Paine 's "Age of 
Reason." If Tom Paine had been living, Mr. 
Finney would undoubtedly have sought him out 
and reasoned with him. 

In the midst of the revival at Adams, a leading 
preacher of the Universalist church appeared 
on the scene and, in rival meetings, deprecated 
the excitement among the young people, said 
that they were needlessly alarmed, God's mercy 
was not limited, they ought not to go about mak- 
ing themselves and everyone else unhappy. No 
man need be scared into the Kingdom of 
Heaven ; they would all get there in good time, 
&c, &c. The effect on the progress of the re- 
vival was paralyzing and the elders of the church 
urged Mr. Gale to make direct reply, but Mr. 

[50] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Gale was in ill health and really unfitted by his 
training to reason with an unbeliever. He 
asked Mr. Finney — who had just begun his 
" Study of Theology" to make some reply. Mr. 
Finney's action was characteristic. He got up 
before the people at prayer meeting and said: 
"I will hear this man. I will give due weight to 
his arguments. I will read my Bible. I will 
study and pray, and if you will come here one 
week from to-night, I will either convince you 
that he is wrong, or, I will become a TJniversalist 
myself." This was not bravado, but the sincere 
declaration of a man, who was willing to put 
everything to the test and accept any conclusion 
to which his examination led him. Mr. Gale was 
shocked at his temerity and all were a little fear- 
ful about the outcome ; but one week from that 
night they came, the house was crowded, and he 
came and — it is needless to say — he did not be- 
come a TJniversalist. Starting with their fun- 
damental doctrine, he said that Christ died, in- 
deed, for all men, but it did not follow that all 
would be saved. There was no such thing as 
automatic salvation. It was not only contrary 

[51] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

to Scripture, but was condemned by reason as 
absurd. A man must repent and do works meet 
for repentance, or he could never be classed with 
the righteous. The responsibility for success 
or failure was placed squarely on the individual, 
when once a way had been opened, &c. The de- 
cline of the Universalist church, which was 
strong at one time, was due, largely, to the un- 
dermining effect of its own commonly received 
doctrine. If all men are to be saved, anyhow, 
why go to the trouble and expense of keeping up 
churches ? 

When the Bench and Bar of Rochester, New 
York, united in a written request to Mr. Finney 
to deliver a series of lectures for their especial 
benefit, he was warned that they w r ere mostly 
Deists, and not particularly concerned about 
their soul's salvation; that they had all read 
Tom Paine and did not believe in the Bible ; and 
that many of them. signed just out of curiosity 
to hear what kind of an argument a lawyer could 
put up for religion. Mr. Finney accepted the 
challenge, took the Bible from its place on the 
pulpit and said he would not replace it, until 

[52] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

they were convinced in their hearts that it ought 
to be there and that they needed it. 

He took for the text of his first discourse, "~Do 
We Knoiv Anything V and reasoned from the 
facts of common experience and the dictates of 
common sense for nine successive sessions, of 
two hours each. He awakened in every mind a 
conviction of sin; the certainty that an omnis- 
cient God must know and disapprove of it ; the 
certainty that a just God would punish it, as an 
infraction of the moral law which was written 
in every heart ; that we all saw sinners escaping 
just punishment in this world and, as lawyers, 
sometimes helped them to escape; that this 
brought contempt on the administration of jus- 
tice here on earth, and that like contempt would 
be felt for God's government, unless we believed 
that somehow, somewhere, they would get their 
just deserts ; that no one who believed in God at 
all could doubt his power to administer punish- 
ment and that it would be right to do so. The 
penalties for violating Nature's laws were inex- 
orable and everlasting. They could derive no 
comfort from analogy, and common sense could 

[53] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

not show them how to escape like consequences 
for a violation of the Moral Law. The sinner's 
case was hopeless and deservedly so. He 
searched their consciences. With his knowledge 
of human nature, he lifted the veil from long 
hidden faults and exposed their failings and 
corruption to themselves. If you won't obey 
God or the dictates of your own consciences 
now, why should you ever do so? Even if you 
make up your minds to do so from now hence- 
forth, how are you going to atone for the sins 
already committed ? You can never make good 
even to your fellow-men, the losses you have in- 
flicted upon them. Damages, as every lawyer 
knows, are poor reparation for sufferings in- 
flicted by wilful misconduct. How, then, can 
you satisfy the demands of the moral Ruler of 
the Universe, to whom damages are as dust in 
the balance, an earthly expedient beneath 
contempt ? 

Then he took the Bible and they listened, with 
streaming eyes, as he read the tender passages of 
Scripture, revealing God's love and fatherly 
solicitude and the Gospel Plan of Salvation. 

[54] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

"And that is the book," he said, " which you 
have removed from your shelves to make room 
for Tom Paine 's shallow 'Age of Reason'! 
How can you escape if you neglect so great sal- 
vation?" The effect was tremendous. Judge 
Gardiner, of the New York Court of Appeals, 
crept up the pulpit steps and said, "Mr. 
Finney I am convinced. Won't you pray for 
me by name and I will take the anxious seat." 
The lawyers rose en masse and crowded to the 
front and knelt down for prayers. Nearly 
every one was converted. Many of them gave 
up their profession and went into the ministry. 
The revival swept the whole community and 
spread from it as a centre in every direction. 
Oh, that we had that magnificent argument in 
permanent form! It could not be compre- 
hended by children of sixteen, but it might con- 
tinue to save men, as it did when originally 
delivered. 

Mr. Finney never went into the pulpit 
without a determination to win his case. He 
wanted a verdict from every audience he faced, 
and if he did not get it, he felt that his sermon 

[55] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

was wasted. He aimed at producing conviction, 
confession, repentance, restitution, submission, 
prayer for forgiveness, and self dedication to 
God's service. Unless a man is convicted of 
sin, nothing can be done with him, because he 
feels no need of Salvation. Christ did not die 
for him. It was in his efforts to produce this 
necessary conviction that Mr. Finney displayed 
his wonderful knowledge of human nature and 
set up the most exalted standard of ethics. 

"If you design to make an impression con- 
trary to the naked truth — you lie." 

i ' If, in managing an estate, you gain for your- 
self some advantage which you might have 
gained for the estate — you steal." 

He said, in 1834, to an audience of New York 
business men : 

" The reason there is not more pure piety in 
New York City is that almost every one is guilty 
of some form of dishonesty." 

He struck at the present day evil of "Rebates" 
when, in 1834, he denounced at one and the same 
time the merchant who asked one price and 
would take another ; and the customer who, when 

[56] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

told the price of an article, immediately tried 
to get it for less. Both were trying to deceive 
and each was seeking to get an undue advantage 
of the other. The customer, who supposed he 
was getting goods for less than their true value, 
must also have supposed that other customers 
would have to pay more in order to make up for 
the loss. He therefore was willing to rob others 
that he himself might become rich. 

The Tappans, merchant princes, were so im- 
pressed with this argument that they adopted 
the one price plan and, strange to say, lost a 
large percentage of their customers, who insisted 
on buying their goods for less than they sup- 
posed any one else would have to pay. 

He sounded the key note of civic reform when 
he preached to his congregation in the Broadway 
Tabernacle : 

" Instead of voting for a man because he be- 
longs to your party . . . you must find out 
whether he is honest and fit to be trusted. . . . 
If you will give your vote only for honest men, 
the country will be obliged to have honest rulers. 
All parties will be compelled to put up honest 
men as candidates/' 

[57] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

He would not preach the doctrine of "Im- 
puted Sin," because he believed every man had 
quite enough sins of his own to atone for. His 
favorite recipe for the "uncou gude" was to 
have him write down any doubtful act he had 
ever been guilty of, then go to his neighbor 
against whom the fault was committed and make 
confession and restitution, then try to think of 
another and set it down. "Once you have be- 
gun," he adds, cheerfully, "you will be surprised 
to see how easy it is to remember others, and how 
little conceit you will have left." 

He insisted on confession and restitution and 
would promise relief on no other terms. 

"If you have defrauded anybody, send the 
money — the full amount — and the interest." 

"If the individual you have injured is too far 
off for you to go and see him, sit down and write 
him a letter and confess the injury, pay the 
postage and put it into the mail immediately." 

He had to be particular about the postage, 
for, in his day, letters could be sent at the ex- 
pense of the person addressed. 

[58] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

"A man does not forsake his sins until he 
has made all the reparation in his power." 

' 'If you think you can practice a little dis- 
honesty and yet continue to enjoy the presence of 
God, you deceive yourselves. ' * 

He spoke of sins prevalent in the communities 
he visited, in the most direct and scathing terms. 
He called a spade, "a spade" and not "an agri- 
cultural implement compounded of wood and 
iron." An unrepentant sinner was a wretch, to 
be despised and condemned , and not a mere un- 
fortunate, to be pitied and coddled. 

Men often resented what they regarded as per- 
sonal allusions, and threatened to chastise and 
even kill him ; but there was something so majes- 
tic in his bearing, so earnest and sincere in his 
words and manner, that no one ever got near to 
him without being overcome. He never had a 
personal encounter after he entered the minis- 
try. 1 One man said: 

1 An amusing story used to go the rounds, periodically, that 
Mr. Finney, walking on the tow path of the Erie Canal near 
Rome, met a boatman who was cursing fearfully at his horses, 
who were tired and balky. Mr. Finney stopped him and said, 
" See here ! Do you know where you are going? " The man said, 

[59] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

"When I heard about what Finney said, I 
wanted to thrash him; when I saw him, I had 
my doubts as to whether I could; and when I 
heard him, he could do what he pleased with 

me." 

He was not content with mere "professions of 
faith. " There must be newness of life. He 
cleaned up every community he visited — and so 
thoroughly, that they stayed clean for at least 
a generation afterwards. 

What Dr. Bush says of the revival in Roches- 
ter might be said of every place in which he 
preached : 

" Yes, d — n it ! I am going to Rome, if I can ever get these 



horses to move along." " No you are not," said Mr. Finney, 

" you are going straight to hell." " Is that so ? " said the boat- 
man. " Well ! do you know where you are going ? " Mr. Finney 
expressed the hope that he would get to Heaven. " That shows 
how little you know," said the boatman. " You are going into the 
canal," and he seized him and threw him in. When pressed for 
an answer as to whether this story was true, Mr. Finney laughed. 
" Ask any man that ever wrestled with me. Ask the men who 
tried to initiate me in the Masonic Lodge at Adams, whether they 
believe that yarn is true. I never saw a boatman that could put 
me in the canal." It seems that during an initiation, when Mr. 
Finney was blindfolded and half dressed, some one took an 
indecent liberty with his person. He resented it hotly and laid 
about him with such vigor that all who could not get out of the 
room were badly bruised and disfigured and the furniture was 
smashed to pieces. 

[60] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

" . . -. The courts and the prisons bore 
witness to its blessed effects. There was a won- 
derful falling off in crime. The courts had little 
to do, and the jail was nearly empty for years 
afterwards. ' ' 1 

When Mr. Finney was licensed to preach, he 
first went to small towns in Jefferson and St. 
Lawrence Counties, under the auspices of a 
Women's Missionary Society. He preached in 
churches, school houses, barns — anywhere where 
he could gather an audience. As Dr. Bush said : 

"The amount of hard work for brain and 
muscle performed by that man in those six 
months was something prodigious. ' ' 2 

He preached three times on Sundays and 
three or four times during the week, attended 
prayer and inquiry meetings, went from house 
to house talking and praying with the people, 
and was accessible to visitors at all hours of the 
day or night. His sermons averaged two hours 
in length and often extended to two and a half 
or three. Yet whether he preached in the back 

1 Reminiscences, p. 15. 2 Reminiscences, p. 11. 

[61] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

woods, or the cities of New York, or in the great 
city of London, his audience never seemed to 
weary, and it was a rare circumstance for any 
to go out. Such interest can only be awakened 
and kept up by an engaging personality, by the 
highest oratorical power, by ever varying the 
themes and illustrations, and by presenting new 
thoughts, or old thoughts clothed in new and 
striking phraseology. The first half hour was 
usually didactic and expository. He defined 
words largely by stating what they did not mean, 
thus getting rid of popular misconceptions ; then 
he proceeded to make practical application of 
the doctrine embodied in the text to the affairs 
of life, and to point out what sort of people it 
was intended to fit, and there were just such 
persons in nearly every audience. On one occa- 
sion he was describing the petty advantages 
trustees may secure at the expense of the bene- 
ficiaries, exchanging their own doubtful or 
worthless securities for valuable assets belonging 
to the estate, &c, and said: "If I were omnis- 
cient, as God is, I could doubtless name persons 
in this very audience who are guilty of just such 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

practices." A respected citizen cried out: 
"Name me!" and sank down in an agony of 
shame and contrition. Mr. Finney said he knew 
of hundreds of just such cases, and thousands 
where the parties made no public confession, but 
made immediate restitution. In most of these 
cases, he had no actual knowledge of wrong- 
doing. He simply had — what he said all minis- 
ters should have to be effective — a thorough 
knowledge of human nature and the courage to 
denounce sin, though the sinner sat right before 
him. All this part of the sermon was clear, 
logical, and forcible, and delivered in the manner 
of the class-room, or court-room, rather than 
that of the pulpit or platform. Then he closed 
with "a few remarks" which might last half an 
hour, or an hour and a half — no one ever knew, 
or cared to know, for it was at this stage of the 
sermon that he summoned every power of imag- 
ination, feeling, gesture and facial expression 
to his aid, and his wonderful word-paintings 
thrilled his audience, and his appeals to the 
emotions were most effective. 
And it was here, all reports of his sermons 

[63] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

completely fail. Mr. Finney never wrote but 
two sermons in his life and that was at the very 
outset of his career. He always preached ex 
tempore, because it was the most effective 
method and because he thought the time given 
to writing out and polishing up sermons might 
better be given to reading, prayer and medita- 
tion. He gave more thought to the substance of 
his discourse than would have been possible if he 
had attempted to reduce it to writing. "What 
would be thought of a lawyer," he used to say, 
"who should stand up before a jury and read 
an essay to them % He would lose his case ! ' ' 

All that is left of his sermons — saving a few 
' ' skeletons ' \ or outlines of his discourses pre- 
pared by himself — is what has filtered through 
the minds of non-professional reporters like 
Rev. Joshua R. Leavitt, Rev. Henry Cowles and 
Rev. Samuel D. Cochran. The style of each of 
these men impressed itself on Mr. Finney's 
thought, in transmission, and it was impossible 
for them to convey all of his thought, much 
less his imagery and pathos. A professional 
stenographer was employed at one time to re- 

[64] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

port his sermons in Niblo's Theatre, New York 
City. He succeeded very well for fifteen or 
twenty minutes, but when Mr. Finney began to 
warm up, and his words began to glow with 
feeling, he forgot entirely what he was there for 
and sat, with idle pencil, in open-mouthed aston- 
ishment. He could not be persuaded to try 
again. 

Dr. Edwards Park said : 

"Some of his rhetorical utterances were in- 
describable . . . but if every word of it 
were on the printed page, it would not be the 
identical sermon of the living preacher." 1 

We can only refer to the impression made 
upon the minds of his auditors, and judge of the 
effort by the tremendous results. 

Dr. Theodore Cuyler says : 

"Charles G. Finney was the acknowledged 
king of American evangelists. . . . His ser- 
mons were chain lightning, flashing conviction 
into the hearts of the stoutest skeptics and the 
links of his logic were so compact they defied 

1 Charles Grandison Finney, by G. Frederick Wright, pp. 
72, 74. 

5 [65] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

resistance. Probably no minister in America 
ever numbered among his converts so many law- 
yers and men of culture." 1 

Prof. Davenport says : 

"No explanation of Finney's career would be 
at all sufficient which did not take into account 
the almost preternatural influence of suggestion 
which he exercised over men's minds. His 
power to compel individuals and audiences to his 
will and purposes was, it seems to me, the most 
extraordinary that appears in any evangelist." 

" . . . So no explanation would be at all 
adequate which did not recognize his higher 
ethical and spiritual qualities and especially the 
possession of a very clear and vigorous mind." 2 

Rev. Dr. Stanton, of Cincinnati, said: 

"I have heard many of the great preachers of 
the day and I regard him as the greatest 
preacher I ever heard." 3 

William E. Dodge, a New York business man, 
said: 



1 Recollections of a Long Life, p. 215. 

2 Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 194, 195, 201. 

3 Reminiscences, p. 26. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

"He was the most remarkable preacher that 
I have ever listened to. He would hold those 
audiences in Prince Street and the Tabernacle 
for an hour and a half or two hours and no one 
seemed to think that the time hung heavy." 1 

Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, one of his successors 
in the pulpit of the Broadway Tabernacle, gives 
a most interesting account of the way Mr. Fin- 
ney prepared his sermons, and analyzes his 
power as follows : 

"Mr. Finney's method of preaching was pecu- 
liar. Gifted with fine powers of analysis which 
were early disciplined in the study of law, he 
has also the constructive faculty in a high de- 
gree ; so that he can at once dissect an error, or 
sophism, analyze a complex feeling, motive, or 
action, and build a logical argument with cumu- 
lative force. With these he combines a vivid 
imagination and the power of graphic descrip- 
tion. Nor, with the seeming sharpness and 
severity of his logic and the terrors which his 
fancy portrays, is he wanting in tenderness of 
feeling. His experimental knowledge of Divine 
truth is deep and thorough ; and his knowledge of 

1 Reminiscences, p. 33. 

[67] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

the workings of the human mind under that 
truth is extended and philosophical. Hence his 
preaching searches the conscience, convinces the 
judgment and stirs the will either to assent or to 
rebellion. His elocution, though unstudied and 
sometimes inelegant, is strangely effective ; and, 
in the proper mood of an assembly, a pause, a 
gesture, an emphasis, an inflection, an exclama- 
tion, will produce the highest oratorical effects. 
The conviction of sincerity attends his words; 
the force of an earnest mind goes with his 
logic." 1 

He was unconsciously dramatic ; never theat- 
rical. One of the most impressive sermons I 
ever heard him deliver was on the text : 

" Judgment also will I lay to the line, and 
righteousness to the plummet, and the hail shall 
sweep away the refuge of lies." 2 

It was an exposition of merciless justice; of 
what guilty men had the right to expect ; of the 
futility of the excuses men were prone to offer 
for evil courses; and of the terrors that would 
overtake them when judgment was at hand. 

1 Last Sabbath in the Broadway Tabernacle, pp. 14, 15. 

2 Isaiah xxviii, 17. 

[68] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Then, right before our eyes, he conjured up such 
a fearful storm of wind, rain and hail that I grew 
chilled through and through. I shivered and 
buttoned my coat up tight and I saw uneasiness 
and apprehension depicted on the faces of all 
around me. 

I was never more astonished in my life than 
when I went outside and saw the world bathed 
in sunlight, the birds twittering, and all as calm 
and serene as a June day could ever be. 

And yet I have been told that I never heard 
Mr. Finney preach ; that his powers were on the 
decline before I had come to years of under- 
standing ! 

How he did it I cannot tell. No one can tell. 
He probably could not tell, himself. He just 
imagined the coming of an awful storm and then 
described what he imagined, and we saw and 
felt all that he imagined. 

You can read Prof. Cowles' report of this 
very sermon ; * but you will not find in it a word 
that even suggests this part of the sermon. The 

"Gospel Themes, p. 119. 
[69] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

sermon itself was an hour and a half long ; you 
can read Prof. Cowles ' report in fifteen minutes. 

If you were to ask any man, who had heard 
Mr. Finney preach between the years 1824 and 
I860, "What was the most impressive sermon 
you ever heard?" the chances are one hundred 
to one, he would name some one of Mr. Finney's. 

Dr. Edward Beecher says a sermon Mr. Fin- 
ney preached in the Park Street Church, Boston, 
in 1831, was 

"the most impressive and powerful sermon I 
ever heard. No one can form any conception of 
the power of his appeal." * 

Dr. Edwards Park says the greatest sermon he 
ever heard was one preached by Mr. Finne)^ in 
Andover, on the text, "The Wages of Sin is 
Death. ' ' Romans vi, 23. 

"Every one of the men [sitting with him] was 
trembling with excitement." 

General J. D. Cox has told me of the tremen- 
dous effect of a sermon preached from the same 

1 Wright's Charles Grandison Finney, p. 105. 
[70] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

text in Mblo's Theatre in New York. But the 
greatest sermon he ever heard was one from the 
text, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great 
salvation ? ' ' Hebrews ii, 3. General Cox was a 
cool man, a brave man, not given to hysterics, 
and, like Mr. Finney, he would reason. Yet, at 
the close of that sermon, when sinners were in- 
vited to come forward and accept the proffered 
salvation, and the aisles were crowded, he went 
leaping down to the front, using the backs of the 
seats as stepping stones. He believed then that 
if he remained in his seat one minute his soul 
would be lost. Various efforts have been made 
to define this power. Some writers call it 
"psychic influence"; some, the "power of sug- 
gestion." Some say he had "personal magne- 
tism"; others, a "high hypnotic potential." I 
call it a transcendent power of communicating 
thought, imagination and feeling. But none of 
these definitions help us to understand it, or 
acquire it. 

His success among the rude frontier settlers 
might be attributed to the reawakening of a sense 
of decency in the hearts of men conscious of their 

[71] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

coarseness and degradation. The people knew 
they were leading immoral lives and didn't need 
any argument to convince them of sin. All they 
needed was a cogent appeal to abandon it. But 
when Mr. Finney began preaching in the cities — 
Rome, Utica, Auburn, Troy, Rochester — he had 
an altogether different class to deal with, and his 
success was even more phenomenal. The re- 
vival in these places began at the top and worked 
downwards. The first to be converted were the 
educated men, leading citizens, respected judges, 
lawyers, doctors, bankers, merchants, manufac- 
turers — and they constituted the prominent por- 
tion of his audiences to the end. The whole com- 
munity was involved in serious thought and con- 
versation, and the very atmosphere seemed 
charged with emotion. 1 During twenty days 
spent in Rome there were five hundred conver- 
sions. " Nearly all the adult population of the 
town were brought into the church. ' ' In Utica 
and vicinity some fifteen hundred were added to 
the churches in a six weeks' campaign. In the 

davenport, Primitive Traits, p. 192. 
[72] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Oneida Presbytery, alone, over three thousand 
conversions were reported as the result of his 
labors in the year 1826. 

Then a strange thing happened. Christ said 
to His apostles: "They shall put you out of the 
synagogues/' John xvi, 2. This was spoken of 
the Jews; but the Presbyterians took it upon 
themselves to fulfil the prophecy in the nine- 
teenth century. As the news of these revivals 
spread, a powerful opposition was awakened. It 
seemed as though the thing most to be dreaded 
by all orthodox Presbyterians, was a sudden in- 
crease in church membership. Dr. Morgan has 
recorded that even he "was shocked with the 
rapidity with which converts were admitted to 
the churches." 1 Dr. Lyman Beecher of Boston, 
Dr. N. W. Taylor of New Haven, and Dr. Asahel 
Nettleton, having no personal knowledge of the 
facts and misled by some very sensational re- 
ports of the meetings, began writing letters to 
the brethren, in New York State and elsewhere, 
warning them against Mr. Finney and his "new 

1 Reminiscences, p. 57. 
[73] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

measures/' advising them not to invite him to 
their pulpits, or to countenance his revivals. 
These letters were received, among others, by 
pastors with whom he had been working at 
Rome, Utica, Clinton, Auburn, and Troy, and 
were shown to him. The objectors were shining 
lights in the church, all of them successful re- 
vivalists of high repute. To a man of Mr. Fin- 
ney's sensitiveness, this concerted movement to 
suppress him was a profound shock. For a time 
all seemed dark before him, and it seemed cer- 
tain that he must give up preaching and go back 
to the practice of the law. He tried to think 
of all occasions for offense he had given, he wept 
and prayed, and the 'cello, long neglected, was 
again brought into requisition. At last he re- 
ceived the assurance that he need not give up,that 
if he would persevere, the way would be made 
plain before him, and opposition would cease. 
Mr. Finney's friends and coadjutors set to work 
in earnest and under the leadership of Dr. Be- 
man, of Troy, secured a conference at New Leb- 
anon, in July, 1827, to which Dr. Beecher, Dr. 
Nettleton, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Hawes of Hartford, 

[74] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

President Humphreys of Amherst College, Jus- 
tin Edwards of Andover, and other Xew Eng- 
land clergymen came, to talk matters over with 
the clergy of Auburn, Rome, Utica, Clinton, and 
Troy. The conference lasted nine days. When 
the facts were presented, their minds were dis- 
abused, their prejudices largely dissipated, and 
all but Dr. Nettleton professed to be satisfied 
with the explanations made. On his way home 
from this conference, Dr. Beecher is reported to 
have said, 

' ' We crossed the mountains expecting to meet 
a company of ~boys, but we found them to be full 
grown men." 1 

Mr. Finney, himself, had very little to say, 
but the depth of his feeling, and the warmth of 
his gratitude to the men who stood by him in 
this extremity, may be judged from the fact that 
his oldest son, born three years later, was named 
Charles Beman after Dr. Beman of Troy, and 
his second son, the donor of this Chapel — born 

"Wright's Charles Grandison Finney, p. 94. 
[75] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

five years later — was named Frederic Norton 
after Dr. Norton of Clinton. 1 

Although the New Lebanon Conference had 
tended thus to clear the atmosphere, the New 
York City pastors were still so prejudiced that 
none of them would invite Mr. Finney to his pul- 
pit. Many of the laymen were anxious to hear 
him, and Anson Gr. Phelps determined that he 
should be heard in New York City. He hired a 
vacant church that could be had for three 
months, and sent for him, agreeing to pay all 
the expenses of carrying on the meetings. When 
the three months were out, Mr. Phelps purchased 
a Universalist Church in Prince Street near 
Broadway, and services were carried on there 
for several months. As there was no organized 
church, converts were instructed to unite with 
the church they had been accustomed to attend, 

1 The middle name in each case was given in honor of one of 
his friends, Beman and Norton. The first name of one, Charles, 
was after himself, and the first name of the other, Frederic, 
bestowed in 1832, was given in honor of Jean Frederic Oberlin, 
whose life he had just been reading with sympathetic interest. 
It was a singular coincidence that, at the same time, John J. 
Shipherd was reading this life of Oberlin out in Elyria, Ohio, 
and gave that name to the institution which he was about to found. 

[761 




Frederic Xortox Finney 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

or the one nearest to where they lived, and thus, 
as a result of his preaching, every Presbyterian, 
Dutch Reformed, and Baptist Church in New 
York City reported accessions of from fifty to 
two hundred in 1830. They were received into 
churches which were opposed to revivals, and 
constituted a helpless minority, and Mr. Phelps, 
the Tappans and others, who were by this time 
interested, decided that they ought to be gath- 
ered into churches of their own, where their new 
zeal could have a chance to show itself and induce 
further growth. So the first Free Presbyterian 
Church was organized and put under the charge 
of Rev. Joel Parker, of Rochester, New York, 
and it prospered so greatly that a Second Free 
Presbyterian Church was organized and, in 1832, 
the Chatham Street Theatre was purchased and 
converted into a chapel on condition that Mr. 
Finney would become its pastor. In the mean- 
time he had been having powerful revival meet- 
ings at Rochester, Auburn, Buffalo, Providence, 
and Boston. He commenced in April, 1832, and 
worked right through the summer, although New 
York City had a terrible visitation of the cholera 

[77] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

and he could count five hearses at a time drawn 
up at doors on the street where he lived. 
Finally, in the fall, he was stricken with the dis- 
ease and could not preach again until the follow- 
ing spring. Then, although still weak, he began 
his labors with such power that five hundred 
members were added in a few weeks, and another 
and another colony was sent off to form new 
churches. In February, 1835, Lewis Tappan 
wrote to the English Commissioners who came to 
study the State of Religion in America, that as a 
result of this movement four churches had been 
organized in as many years, with a total member- 
ship of fifteen hundred and eighty-seven; that 
steps were being taken to organize two more, and 
that fifty-one young men belonging to these 
churches were studying for the ministry, 1 and, 
he added : 

"More than half the persons who are hope- 
fully converted in these congregations unite with 
other churches, owing to various circumstances." 

1 Letter of Lewis Tappan, Feb. 1, 1835, published as Appendix 
VIII to Reed & Matheson's Visit to American Churches, pp. 
345, 346. 

[78] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

" Could suitable ministers be procured it 
would be no difficult thing for the membership of 
the Free Churches to organize many new 
churches every year." 1 

In the fall of 1833 Mr. Finney's friends de- 
cided to build for him a large church with a seat- 
ing capacity of twenty-five hundred and a total 
capacity of four thousand. He designed the 
structure himself. It was exactly one hundred 
feet square, with plain brick walls, located fifty 
feet from Broadway in the centre of a built-up 
block, so that not a dollar should be wasted on 
external ornament. He cared more for acous- 
tics than aesthetics. It had a deep gallery all 
around and a spacious platform about one-third 
of the way from the back to the front. Every 
listener was within eighty feet of the speaker. 
It was, when finished, the most perfect audi- 
torium in New York City. As one of his succes- 
sors said, "it was one in which the speaker could 
speak and the hearers hear, without effort." It 
cost $66,500. Under the rear gallery were 

1 Ibid., 351. See also Thompson's Last Sabbath in the Broad- 
way Tabernacle, p. 12. 

[79] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

arranged rooms for the pastor's study, and a 
large class-room where it was expected that he 
would give instruction to the young men who 
were preparing for the ministry. 1 Services 
were held in it for the first time in April, 1835. 
Mr. Finney now had just what he wanted, a 
nov arc) from which to lift the whole new world. 
It was not merely that New York was the largest 
city on the Continent and capable in itself of fur- 
nishing large and ever changing audiences — but 
it was the landing place of nearly all European 
emigrants — English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Ger- 
man, Scandinavian ; it was the place to which 
merchants, planters, and manufacturers went 
from all parts of the country, to trade and lay 
in their stocks of goods and supplies. They had 
to go to this great mart of commerce several 
times a year, because " commercial travellers' ' 
were then unknown. Where on earth could a 
man hope to exercise a greater influence? If 

1 Memoir of David Hale, by Rev. Jos. P. Thompson, p. 62; 
Thompson's Last Sabbath in The Broadway Tabernacle, pp. 13- 
36; Sermon of Rev. Charles E. Jefferson at 60th Anniversary of 
The Broadway Tabernacle, pp. 9-11. These gentlemen are not 
always accurate as to dates, which are as stated in the text. 

[80] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

lie regarded fame — where could lie find a better 
opportunity to achieve it ? If he wished to pre- 
pare young men for the ministry, the class-room 
was ready, and fifty-one of his own converts 
were eager to begin their studies. 

Now occurred what I must regard as the most 
extraordinary incident in this extraordinary 
life. Father Shipherd, having secured about 
the most undesirable tract of land to be found in 
Northern Ohio and founded a school in which 
labor and learning were to go hand in hand, hav- 
ing cleared about twenty acres, erected Oberlin 
Hall (a two-story frame building about thirty- 
five by forty feet), a saw mill and a few shanties, 
and having gotten together about a hundred stu- 
dents — only four of whom were far enough ad- 
vanced to be called freshmen — went to New York 
City and asked Mr. Finney to leave his church 
and the great field opening before him and come 
out to Oberlin to be a Professor of Theology. 
Was there ever a more absurd proposition'? 

About the same time, a country clergyman in 
New England was invited to come out and be- 
come one of the professors. He declined the 

6 [81] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

appointment, saying that a friend whose judg- 
ment he was bound to respect, had urged the 
greatest caution, since Oberlin was only an ex- 
periment, and further, "it was the offspring of 
a projector, who is a son of a projector whose 
projects have always failed." 1 That was what 
might be called "the common sense answer" to 
such a proposition. But Mr. Shipherd had one 
of the elements of a successful projector, the 
nerve to ask for what he wanted. The New 
England clergyman had comparatively little to 
lose. Mr. Finney was asked to throw away the 
finest opportunity that any preacher of his day 
and generation ever had — not merely an oppor- 
tunity to preach to large crowds and become 
famous — but an opportunity to do untold good. 
What other clergymen would have done, under 
like circumstances, may be judged from Dr. Cuy- 
ler's attitude — after the future of Oberlin was 
secure beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Finney, 
being eighty years old and unable longer to 
preach regularly, was trying to find a man to 



'Leonard's Story of Oberlin, p. 105. 
[82] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

fill the First Church pulpit. He wrote to Dr. 
Theodore L. Cuyler, pleading with him to come. 

"I think there is no more important field of 
ministerial labor in the world. I know that you 
have a great congregation in Brooklyn and are 
mightily prospered in your labors, but your flock 
does not contain a thousand students pursuing 
the higher branches of education from year to 
year. Surely your field in Brooklyn is not more 
important than mine was at the Broadway Tab- 
ernacle in New York, nor can your people be 
more attached to you than mine were to me." x 

Dr. Cuyler writes, "the kind overture was 
promptly declined," and does not seem to think 
his decision requires any explanation, or apol- 
ogy. There were favorable considerations pre- 
sented to him, that could not be presented to 
Mr. Finney. And yet, Mr. Finney left the 
Broadway Tabernacle, just one month after 
it was completed, and came to Oberlin. Dr. 
Charles E. Jefferson said, on the sixtieth Anni- 
versary of the Broadway Tabernacle : 

1 Recollections of a Long Life, Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 219. 

[83] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

"What might have been the future under Mr. 
Finney's continued leadership we shall never 
know, for at the end of the first year, two visitors 
arrived from the West who carried him to Ohio, 
to become the head of a little school just organ- 
ized at Ooerlin." 

The last seven words of Dr. Jefferson express 
his opinion of the move. He was not even to be 
the head of the "little school !" 

In 1851 Dr. John Campbell of London, in bid- 
ding farewell to Mr. Finney, after nine months 
of continuous revival preaching, said: 

"We cannot say that we are much gratified at 
the thought of Mr. Finney's returning to College 
duties and the general ministry of a rural 
charge. We do not consider that such is the 
place for the man; and we must be allowed to 
think that fifteen years ago a mistake was com- 
mitted when he became located in the midst of 
academic bowers. . . . He is made for the 
millions — his place is in the pulpit, rather than 
the professor's chair. He is a Heaven-born sov- 
ereign of the people. The people he loves ; and 
the mass of the people all but idolize him." 

These men probably voiced the sentiment of 
thousands of Mr. Finney's friends and admirers. 

[84] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

Why did lie go ? I think the best answer which 
can be given to that question is, because he did 
not want to. That was the answer he gave to a 
friend who asked him why he went to Boston to 
preach, when he had remarked that the condi- 
tions were more discouraging there than in any 
large city which he visited. 1 Whenever he did 
what he did not want to do his labors were espe- 
cially blessed. It was so when he went to 
Rochester, after he and all the friends he con- 
sulted had concluded that he ought not to go 
there, because the outlook was so unfavorable. 

In the summer of 1834, Arthur Tappan had 
asked him to go out to Cincinnati and prepare a 
class of forty young men for the ministry, and 
offered to pay all the expenses. These young 
men had left Lane Seminary in a body, when the 
Trustees passed a resolution suppressing the dis- 
cussion of Slavery, and were still holding to- 
gether at Cumminsville, a suburb of Cincinnati. 
It was a splendid class, their average age was 
twenty-six, they were men of mature judgment, 

1 Deacon Lamson, Reminiscences, p. 41. 
[85] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

well grounded in classical studies and practiced 
in debate. Two-thirds of them were from New r 
York State and New England, and a majority of 
them were Mr. Finney's own converts. Of 
course, he was interested in them and anxious 
to accommodate Mr. Tappan; but he said he 
could not leave his church, and made the sensible 
suggestion that as soon as his class-room in the 
Broadway Tabernacle was ready for use they 
should be brought on to New York and receive 
instruction there. He considered the matter as 
settled and went on to prepare and deliver that 
course of " Lectures on Revivals/' which had 
such a wide circulation and influence. Then 
came Father Shipherd and Rev. Asa Mahan, 
who put themselves into communication with the 
Tappans and reopened the whole question. Mr. 
Finney did not want to leave his church and, 
with remarkable foresight, stated the hazards of 
the new enterprise and the objections to leaving 
his work in the city, to embark on what Dr. 
Leonard rightly calls a " tremendous venture. 



i? i 



Leonard's Story of Oberlin, p. 278. 
[86] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

But all his demands were met and at last the 
question presented itself in this form: Dr. 
Mahan and Professor Morgan and at least forty 
students of Theology will go to Oberlin if you 
go. The Tappans and their friends will provide 
salaries for eight professors and will pay $10,000 
down for necessary buildings, and, in time, 
$80,000 more for endowment. You need not 
give up your church, you can spend your sum- 
mers in Oberlin and your winters in New York, 
and the church will pay your expenses both go- 
ing and coming. It is the one chance to establish 
a school in the West, where young men may be 
properly trained for the ministry and where all 
men may gain correct views of the great evil of 
slavery. Still more, Arthur Tappan privately 
pledged to Mr. Finney his entire income, then 
amounting to $100,000 a year — less what was 
necessary for his family — in support of the en- 
terprise. If he refused to go, Oberlin would get 
nothing, the Lane Seminary students would scat- 
ter, and a great opportunity for doing good 
would be lost. 

When so presented, Mr. Finney feared that 

[87] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

further opposition to the Oberlin plan might be 
due to a selfish regard for his own comfort, or 
advancement, and so — he went. If he had come 
to a different decision, you and I would not be 
here to-day. Our fellow alumni, occupying sta- 
tions of usefulness all over the world, would not 
be where they are. President Fairchild, who 
never used extravagant language, wrote : 

"If Charles G. Finney had not lived and la- 
bored Oberlin could not have existed. ' ' 1 

"Without them" (the anti-slavery impulse 
and Charles Gr. Finney) " Oberlin could never 
have done the work which has fallen to it and 
probably could not have existed beyond a single 
decade." 2 

Mr. Finney's coming secured for Oberlin not 
merely the things promised, but the attention of 
the whole religious world. His reputation and 
wide acquaintance attracted hundreds — I may 
say thousands — of students from New York, 
Pennsylvania, and New England long before the 
local field yielded its full crops. His converts 

1 Reminiscences, p. 77. 

2 Introduction to Leonard's History of Oberlin, p. 15. 

[88] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

and children of his converts flocked to Oberlin, 
and others, who knew him only by reputation, 
desired to have their children educated under his 
influence. For similar reasons England, Scot- 
land, Wales and the West Indies contributed 
large numbers of students. 1 

Mr. Finney insisted that one of the first eight 
professors should be a " Professor of Sacred 
Music," and that the best man who could be 
found should be appointed to carry it to its high- 
est perfection. He tried to get Mason, Hast- 

1 Out of the 132 graduates of the Theological Seminary in 
the first twelve years only 11 — just one-twelfth — were from Ohio 
and the West. Out of the 373 graduates of the College Depart- 
ment in the first seventeen years after his coming only 60 — less 
than one-sixth — were from Ohio and the West. The great 
majority of the students, in both College and Seminary, were 
from New York State and the others were mostly from the New 
England States. While the percentage of Ohio students in- 
creased rapidly after 1853, the class of 1861 was the first in which 
they constituted an actual majority of the graduates. The Ohio 
students were induced to come chiefly by the strong body of 
students present from other States, who preached, lectured and 
taught school in Ohio during the long winter vacations. The 
value of Mr. Finney's name became apparent again when he was 
elected President, in 1851, to succeed President Mahan. An en- 
dowment fund of $100,000 was raised almost immediately; the 
total attendance increased from 571, in 1851-2, to 1020, in 1852~3. 
and 1305, in 1853-4. The graduating class of '51 numbered but 
15. The graduating class of '61 numbered 61. 

[891 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

ings, or Bradbury, but they were not altruistic 
enough to give up lucrative church and chorus 
appointments in the East; although, at his re- 
quest, both Mason and Hastings came out at 
various times to give the Oberlin chorus special 
instruction and lead the Commencement music. 
And it was under George N. Allen, a pupil of 
Lowell Mason, that classical music and the great 
chorus became established features of Oberlin 
life and student culture. There is not to-day in 
all this broad land, one college which can boast 
of such a choir and furnish such music as the 
Musical Union of Oberlin. It is perhaps the 
greatest — certainly the most quickly appreci- 
ated — of the outward signs which distinguish 
Oberlin from other schools. 

But Mr. Finney had still to make a harder de- 
cision. In the summer of 1837 he was satisfied 
that he could not continue to be pastor of the 
Broadway Tabernacle and Professor of The- 
ology at Oberlin. The work in New York suf- 
fered during his absence and he could not find 
an assistant pastor capable of keeping the church 
alive and active while he was away. 

[90] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

The attempt to fill Mr. Finney's shoes, six 
months in the year, might well appall any man. 
It was next to impossible for a man to develop 
an independent line of thought and action, while 
holding over, and hence his responsibility as an 
individual was weakened and the loyalty of his 
congregation was always a matter of doubt. 

He must give up one or the other. Which 
should it be? While he was debating this 
question at Oberlin, the terrible panic of 
1837 struck the country, and nearly every 
merchant in New York City was forced into 
bankruptcy, including the Tappans and all 
of the subscribers to the $80,000 professorship 
fund. Oberlin was cut off from its source of 
supply and was in debt nearly $30,000 for new 
buildings and expenses incurred on the faith of 
the promised endowment. The Lane Seminary 
students had mostly graduated. He had done 
his full duty by them. Father Shipherd had 
gone off to found other institutions. The Col- 
lege enterprise was, to all appearance, a failure, 
and he was under no legal or moral obligation to 
stay. Of course, the sensible thing to do was to 
go back to New York and devote himself exclu- 

[91] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

sively to the interests of his church. He could 
find a ready support anywhere in the East. Let 
the College take care of itself ! But he looked at 
the hard lot of Oberlin College and all the good 
people, old and young, who had come there, 
largely on his account, and again he chose the 
rough and thorny path and sent his resigna- 
tion — to the Broadway Tabernacle. His cow 
died, and to buy another he sold his travelling 
trunk. He had come to stay. On Thanksgiv- 
ing Day, 1837, he was at the end of his resources. 
He did not know where he could get funds to pay 
for another meal. He went to church and con- 
ducted Thanksgiving services for a congregation 
as hard pressed as himself ; and all were lifted 
above the cares of this world. He says, naively, 
he enjoyed his own preaching that day as much 
as ever he did in his life, and then went home, to 
be met at the gate by a letter, wholly unexpected, 
from Josiah Chapin, of Providence, Rhode 
Island, enclosing a draft for $200 and a promise 
to pay his salary as professor as long as it might 
be needed. 1 

1 Memoirs, p. 338. 
[92] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

The prejudice against Oberlin was so great, on 
account of its anti-slavery principles, coeduca- 
tion and reception of colored students, and 
the effect of the panic so universal and prostrat- 
ing that relief could not be expected in this coun- 
try. After much prayer and consideration, 
Father Keep and William Dawes were sent to 
England to try and raise funds to tide the Col- 
lege over its difficulties. Had they friends or 
personal acquaintances in England? Not one! 
What interest had England in Oberlin ? At that 
time, absolutely none ! Ohio was but a spot on 
their maps. No Englishman had ever heard of 
Oberlin. How, then, could these men expect to 
get a dollar for the College? They had two 
words to conjure with — Anti-Slavery and 
Charles G. Finney. England had just emanci- 
pated her slaves. The moral force which 
brought this about had not spent itself. Mr. 
Finney's reputation preceded Keep and Dawes 
across the ocean. The " Revival Lectures," 
which he preached in 1834, had been reprinted in 
Great Britain and had an enormous circulation. 
One publisher alone reported a sale of eighty 

[93] 



CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY 

thousand copies. They were almost sure to find 
a copy of this book in the house of every minister 
and intelligent layman they called upon. They 
could say the author of this popular work, this 
great revivalist, was a professor and pastor at 
Oberlin; that he was influencing hundreds of 
young people every year, each of whom would in 
turn influence hundreds of others in all parts of 
the country, and that this whole cumulative in- 
fluence was directed against slavery. And they 
could add that all this was in danger, unless they 
could get a little timely assistance— and they got 
$30,000 over and above all expenses. 

Friends: — time will not permit me to speak 
further of this man. You are probably as well 
informed about his work here as Professor, 
President, Pastor and Guide, as I am, myself. 

It is fitting that this Memorial should stand 
in Oberlin, on the site where he lived for forty 
years. It is fitting that it should take the form 
of a chapel, in which large numbers can be 
stirred to newness of life by good preaching and 
good music. 

And as long as this Chapel stands, let men re- 

[94] 



3 

2§ 




MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

member that this servant of God based bis faith 
on reason, addressed himself to adults, expected 
adults to be converted, and was not disappointed. 
And as long as Oberlin stands, let her sons and 
daughters remember that he who was greatest 
among her founders accomplished most through 

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